The Old Man and the Light Bulb by V. Hansmann

I hate this cavernous, orange store. I always bite my tongue and decide to ask for help but end up stewing on line at the Customer Service counter anyway. Or I wander the aisles hoping to make eye contact with a person in a smock. All I want is an incandescent lightbulb. I lead with ‘Want,’ while ‘Can’t Have’ is the ball-and-chain I drag along behind me. Give me watts, goddammit, not lumens. What the hell is a lumen anyway? This is what a lumen is – “the SI unit of luminous flux, equal to the amount of light emitted per second in a unit solid angle of one steradian from a uniform source of one candela.” Whoa. Way beyond my pay grade. The definition of a watt is equally bogus, yet everyone knew where the watt stood: the more watts the brighter the bulb. The lumen does a fan dance but means essentially the same thing, only incomprehensibly and with its fingers crossed behind its back.

I feel the same way when I get in my Subaru. I open the door, slide in, slip the key in the ignition, and, from the dashboard a firehose of hieroglyphics pours forth, a consciousness-devouring MumboJumboTron. What is the significance of the little blue sailboat? Those four consonants whose secret is embedded in the car’s 600-page manual printed in 6-point type? I feel like an old guy in a little boat who’s hooked a big life that’s pulling me out to sea, only to be masticated into nonexistence by information.

This riff is my contribution to the Treasury of Old Man Yells at Cloud.

Artist’s Statement

I believe a writer is well-served by doing two things: 1) making new friends, and 2) staying curious.

V. Hansmann was raised in suburban New Jersey; growing up to be neurotic, alcoholic, homosexual, and old. He earned an MFA in creative writing in 2011 and, since then, his publishing credits have been sporadic. In 2022, V opened Prospect Street Writers House, a writers residency in Vermont, which is beginning to break even.